A housing company in London has apologized to Jewish residents for threatening to take down their Mezuzahs if they did not remove it themselves, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
Warwick Estates said in a statement Monday that it was sorry for the “overzealous” letter sent to residents of Cedarwood Court, near the heavily-Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill.
The letter was sent last week, saying the hanging objects outside homes was against the terms of the leases.
One resident said she had never seen anyone complain about the Mezuzahs in 10 years living in the area, and the mayor of Hackney said he would intervene.
On Monday, the company backtracked, a day after the JC reported the letter and the anger it had caused locally.
Full Statement From Warwick Estates:
We apologise for the letter sent to some of our customers asking them to remove religious items from their property, specifically their Mezuzots.
We wish to make it very clear that residents of the block in question are not required to remove these and they will certainly not be removed by Warwick Estates or any representatives working on our behalf.
The letter was sent by the property manager who was attempting to perform his job in line with his interpretation of the lease. The letter was overzealous in its nature and not in keeping with our business values.
The property manager in question and Warwick Estates are deeply sorry for any offence we have caused to the residents at the development and indeed the wider Jewish community.
We thank the members of the Jewish community for bringing the matter to our attention and we will ensure that appropriate training takes place so mistakes such as this do not reoccur again.
(Nat Golden – YWN)
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4 Responses
“on external parts of their demise” !!!!
who died?
sounds like a very “interesting” estate manager…
I lived in London for almost 10 years. The news in this article reminds me of the boring dull dead type of lifestyle I went through there. I “thank hashem” I am already out of the mess called stamford hill.
It’s very interesting about Mezuzahs. I’ve seen and heard that many non-Jews know (and when explained to them) that the Mezuzah is a good luck charm for the home, they don’t remove it when renting or buying a home. They continue to leave it on for good luck. The UK Company should consider themselves blessed for having Mezuzahs in their building. Hey, it’s a good luck charm!!!!!! Right?
Dear “USnebech”. There are a long list of words that we in the USA use in 1 way and for them in the UK it is something else. I lived there for 9+ years and it is still difficult for me until today to get rid of some of the English slangs that I learnt over there. After 2 years being back in the USA, I still ask around in public places “where are the toilets please” instead of “restrooms”, as in the UK “toilets” is a regular beautiful word.